Britain has itself to blame for the Manchester attack because it colluded with jihadists and left a power vacuum in Libya, according to the son of the Lockerbie bomber.

Khaled al-Megrahi, the son of the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in 1988, said the 2011 war against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi left the North African state fertile ground for terrorism.

In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted over the attack, which killed all 259 people aboard the aircraft and 11 more on the ground. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and sent back to Libya. He died from cancer in 2012.

The younger al-Megrahi said the suicide bombing by 22-year-old British-Libyan Salman Abedi at Manchester Arena last week was a direct result of the UK decision to join with NATO to intervene against the Gaddafi regime.

“It was Manchester, but tomorrow it will be some other place,” he told the Telegraph from his home in Tripoli.

“The militants will kill each other here and then come to each city in the West.